If you’re calculating, or recalculating, this year’s video content marketing strategy, Vidyard’s 2017 Video in Business Benchmark Report suggests some practical business video trends worth your attention. The report’s insights are based on a year’s worth of data covering 500 businesses and over 600 million video streams on Vidyard’s hosting platform.

High-tech and manufacturing companies lead

High-tech companies put out more videos than anyone else — 21 per month. Manufacturing companies put out 20; the average is 16. Video libraries are doubling in size every 16 months. Your video output is much lower? That’s no reason to mope. Look at your existing library and see what can be repurposed. Snag a subject matter expert and record some FAQ answers on a smart phone (will probably need some editing, though). Maybe some of your blog posts could be livened up and attract new readers if you add some video snippets to share in social media.

Desktop browsers rule

86% of views of business-related videos take place on desktop browsers. This matters for technology businesses if you want to add value with interactive features like chapters and branching. You can’t count on mobile devices for interactive features. There are plenty of options for turning static longform videos like webinars into navigable videos customers will appreciate. Maybe that should be your first repurposing project. It’s not hard to do. There are plenty of online options.

The most popular viewing time

Wednesday between 7AM-11AM PST is the most popular viewing time. This is interesting, and might be worth considering in scheduling email campaigns that link to a video, or planning live-streamed video. But viewing actually varies very little across the work week (17% ±1%). Weekends account for 15% of views.

You really need to get to the point

The fact that nearly 56% of all published business videos are less than two minutes long is an indication that most companies are aware that people expect business videos to deliver the information they want without delay. And consider this: videos under 90 seconds keep only 53% of viewers watching to the end. It’s far less important to end with a flourish than it is to get to the good stuff early.

Video analytics

77% of companies use some kind of analytics to measure video effectiveness.

Obviously, the larger your video budget, the more you care about using analytics. Businesses producing 50 videos or more per year are 2.5x more likely to use advanced video analytics, and those using advanced analytics are far more likely to be increasing their video budgets this year.

There doesn’t appear to be much correlation between a company’s size and its commitment to engaging customers with video. But, cumulatively, the numbers represent a lot of customer engagement. Source: Vidyard.

Size matters not at all

One business video trends dataset that seems to defy explanation is the correlation between company size and the volume of video production. To be sure, the largest companies produce the most videos, but the smallest companies are outproducing the rest. Maybe the only practical technology business guidelines that can be drawn from as I see it, is that no matter who you compete with, there’s a good chance that your competitors are producing more videos than you are 🙂

A writer with a background in public broadcasting and corporate marketing communications, Bruce McKenzie pioneered the “2-Minute Explainer®” brand video for technology businesses in 2004.
Customers have included numerous enterprise technology companies (Cisco, IBM, BMC, Brocade/Broadcom, Software AG, CA Technologies, CompuCom) as well as B2B startups.
Rebranded “Technology Business Video” in 2017, the company today produces a variety of “tactical” videos to reach buying team members throughout the sales cycle. We take everything marketers want to say and transform it into short videos that communicate stuff buyers want to know. It’s basically what good writers do, made visual.
Visit www.techbizvideo.com to learn more or set up a chat about tactical videos with the Technology Business Video professionals.